Haas Business Center

Now that the inaugural season is in the books, the University of West Florida football program is preparing for 2017.

A dollars-and-cents study of that first year is also in the works.

The Argonauts went 5-6, tying Florida Tech and New Haven for the most wins by a first-year Division II program in the past decade. Head Coach Pete Shinnick says expectations were not solely based on the scoreboard.

Pensacola residents appreciate their law enforcement and parks, but are less pleased with transportation and infrastructure, according to a new citywide survey.

The University of West Florida’s Haas Business Center was commissioned by the city to conduct the telephone survey during the last quarter of 2015. A similar review was done the previous year, which project leader Amy Newburn says had more components.

The University of West Florida and Town of Century are teaming up to develop a marketing plan to benefit the north Escambia County area.

The plan centers on helping Century beef up its business assets, then promote the town to site selectors, and firms looking to expand or re-locate.

“It was about a year and a half ago that we were first contracted to establish an economic development strategic plan that was paid for by a grant that the town received from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity” said Brice Harris at UWF’s Haas Business Center.

In this week’s Economic Report, Dr. Rick Harper provides analysis of local job growth during last year, which he details in his latest bi-weekly economics column.

The headline is ‘Pensacola-area job growth was better than expected in 2014.’

“What was really good news is that for the most recent twelve months, we actually saw a 3,400 job increase,” said Harper. That’s an increase of about 2.1 percent, which is slightly above the national figure of 2.0 percent, and a bit below Florida’s rate of 3.0 percent.

In this week’s Economic Report on WUWF, Dr. Rick Harper, discusses new initiatives from the University of West Florida Office of Economic Development and Engagement (OEDE) and Haas Center for Business Research and Economic Development.

“There’s a lot of new things happening and among those is an effort to step up publicity that we generate about the sorts of things that we’re doing,” said Harper, who is director of OEDE.

Economic development efforts in the Town of Century are getting ratcheted up, through a new partnership with the University of West Florida.

The Escambia County Commission voted unanimously last week to approve the contract between the Century Chamber of Commerce and the Haas Center, for the latter to take over implementation of a plan it developed for Century.

Cindy Anderson, a former TEAM Santa Rosa executive director, spent about a year overseeing the Chamber’s economic development efforts. She now has a similar job with the Northwest Florida Manufacturer’s Council.

Escambia County gets low grades in a number of quality of life issues – such as crime and health – in a new math and statistics project conducted by a group of graduate students at the University of West Florida.

The eleven “data detectives” have been spending the fall semester going through databases for information on every county in the United States – 3,108. UWF Distinguished Professor Dr. Raid Amin oversees the project – the idea for which came to him while teaching a similar course in the summer of 2010.